


The Knight and the Vessels

by Schnikeys_Discuss (Schnikeys)



Series: Clockie's Meta [1]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Archived from radioactivesupersonic Blog, Character Analysis, Child Abuse, Gen, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27049297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnikeys/pseuds/Schnikeys_Discuss
Summary: "So the Knight- our player character- is a “vessel”, one of many, many similar creatures created in the Abyss from the darkness beneath the kingdom. Per the title of the game and their own formal title, they are suggested to be empty creatures without will- not truly alive....However… This is contrasted by the behavior available to you, that, within the world of the game, without your influence, the Knight would take on its own. The Knight has a clear personality."
Series: Clockie's Meta [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974223
Kudos: 23





	The Knight and the Vessels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/gifts).



So part of why I love Hollow Knight is its breadcrumbs-system of storytelling, there’s rich lore but you have to go explore and dig it up. And having just pretty recently gotten to the Abyss, I had some thoughts about that- so, spoilers under the cut I suppose.

So the Knight- our player character- is a “vessel”, one of many, many similar creatures created in the Abyss from the darkness beneath the kingdom. Per the title of the game and their own formal title, they are suggested to be empty creatures without will- not truly alive.

And sure enough, we see that NPCs comment that the Knight is silent, there is something very impassive, almost vacant about their eyes. They would seem largely incapable of emoting, as even when unconscious their eyes stare forwards out into the world. It’s quite possible they can’t blink or, say, furrow their eyebrows or such.

However… This is contrasted by the behavior available to you, that, within the world of the game, without your influence, the Knight would take on its own. The Knight has a clear personality.

There is exhaustive effort in the game for you to listen to everyone. As much as you possibly want. You can sit and hear Marissa’s song for as long as you like. You can sit next to Bretta, you can hear every single one of Zote’s fifty-seven precepts- multiple times. There’s no point where it’s suggested a character trails off because they’re going on forever and the Knight has judged it unimportant and stopped listening to them.

You are given many, many, many moments to be a quiet, attentive audience to these people’s lives and experiences even in contexts where it does not at all serve the Knight and their quest. Elderbug, in the same breath that he states the Knight doesn’t seem the talkative sort, also calls them enjoyable company.

It seems as if the Knight is curious about people and their experiences. Even people they don’t seem to particularly like, considering their willingness to smack Zote around in the colosseum- but even then, people point out that Zote survived that without apparent injury besides a wounded pride, which would suggest that the Knight, who’s usually a terrifyingly efficient little murder machine that can take on creatures many times their size and many levels of prowess _above_ Zote- pulled their blows. Characters such as Ogrim, Hornet, and the Mantis Lords also survive their fights, which might suggest that they pull back before trying to fight to the death, but Zote’s battle, in which he’s not exactly doing anything, would also suggest that the Knight spares opponents sometimes.

This curiosity can also be reflected a little in how many times the game gives you breathtaking views to take in, and lavishly rewards the tendency to dawdle and poke around anywhere that catches your eye. The Knight is driven by their quest- they venture continuously into areas such as Deepnest and the Ancient Basin, deeper and deeper through greater and greater adversity- but it is not a single-minded pursuit. I think of many of the scenes with Quirrell where he’s just sitting and enjoying the view and you’re encouraged to talk to him and do the same. 

Conversely, I also think there’s a thread of pride, and of anger, to the Knight.

While the Mantis Lords are an essential fight to progress into Deepnest, we don’t really see that from an in-universe perspective. About the time the average player is just sort of stumbling across the mantis village, Quirrell suspects that the Knight is seeking to challenge the Lords to a fight- which they are (the option afforded) and there’s something about the way that the Knight brandishes their nail at the beginning of that fight.

The Knight finds their strength important. They are not boastful- but they have a desire to be recognized. Not every battle they seek out is necessarily because of their quest- the Hunter suggests that the Knight’s inclination is to understand, but also to conquer to a degree- that same curiosity applied in a slightly more morbid light to the enemies that face the Knight. And the mantis tribe certainly seems to recognize that thread of pride.

As for anger- as mentioned, they don’t want to kill Zote, but the way they smack him around in the colosseum fight would suggest they are certainly _irritated_ by him. It’s not the behavior of someone who is so far above Zote they don’t care about him continuously blowing them off and going and getting himself into even more danger before boasting about his false glory. The fact that you can in fact choose to leave Zote to die (there’s an achievement for it) would suggest that the Knight is pretty on the fence about him, actually.

But that could certainly just be covered under pride. There’s definitely a reason I see the Knight as angry, and, it stems from what we learn in the Abyss, about the vessels and their fate.

Quite simply, as I’ve said above: the Knight is clearly a sentient and autonomous being with full impressions. They’re some kind of eerie ghost child born of the void, but they are not a blank slate or an empty puppet of the King’s will as the title of “vessel” might be suggested.

The creatures encountered in the Abyss are called Siblings. The Hunter’s notes for that entry suggests that they have never encountered these creatures- have not gone into the Abyss. (They couldn’t, as the King’s Brand was needed to open the door)

This would tell us the Hunter didn’t name them. It’s the Knight who thinks of them that way. First and foremost: as siblings.

The Broken Vessel’s name is very matter-of-fact, but its dream boss, the Lost Kin, is not. The Lost Kin is not someone anyone besides the Knight encountered, so its name suggests how the Knight feels about them.

Nosk, whose entire M.O. is luring people with the image of their loved ones, when facing the Knight, takes the form of the Knight itself: that is to say, takes the form of a vessel. This tells us that when confronted unexpectedly with another vessel- the Knight’s response is to chase that- to the point that they could be led all the way in to Nosk’s den. (and where we see that Nosk has successfully preyed on several vessels with this very same strategy- this would tell us that it is not in the slightest a fluke that our Knight is sentient)

The dreamers, when first confronting the Knight, suggest that the Knight is being called- either by something within the seals- _or by the vessel_. It’s a distinct possibility that the Pure Knight- the one who was used to contain the infection- is crying out for help and the entire game is more or less our Knight responding. 

Nosk is pretty much solid proof that the vessels care about one another. It’s hard to say for sure if the Siblings’ behavior is deliberately malicious- they don’t seem to “attack” as much as they just float into the Knight and that presence harms them. They’re described as “lingering fragments of will” and they take a form very similar to the Shade, which both the Hunter and Jiji suggest is a physical presence of the Knight’s regrets. (another interesting idea about the Knight’s personality- being vanquished or failing at a task leaves behind a ‘ghost’ of the Knight which proceeds to attack them… for being weak? for failing?)

Everything about the Abyss, going in, smacks of ancient sins even harder than the rest of the game, and while I was totally waiting for the revelation of ‘tampering in unnatural forces’ or some such, what I found instead didn’t disappoint.

As mentioned: the vessels are sentient beings. If we assume the Pure Knight is the only adult vessel we encounter (supported in that the broken vessel is much bigger than ours, which would suggest they do age)… then our Knight and the majority of the vessels we encounter are children. This is reinforced by the Nailmaster you encounter in the Howling Cliffs who declares that after learning his art, he thinks of you as his child- it suggests that to anyone else’s perspective (some dialogue from Zote on initially meeting him would seem to support this) the Knight isn’t merely a small bug, but a young one. 

The King and whoever was working with him at the time created a staggering number of sentient children- children who had the capacity to bond and _did_ bond, with each other.

However, once they had the ideal vessel- the Pure Hollow Knight- they sealed the Abyss with all of those vessels _still inside of it_. So many of them died that the bottom of the Abyss is littered with their bodies, and thronging with their regrets- the Knight’s siblings.

A few, we see, made it out, but with seemingly the sole exception of our Knight- they all succumbed elsewhere in the kingdom. As the Knight is the first one to break the door out of King’s Pass (and the lift on the other side of the valley, in Crystal Peak, is untouched) no vessels made it to Dirtmouth before.

The Broken Vessel even fell so far as to be consumed by the plague and, considering they’re aware enough that their spirit acknowledges the Knight and passes on essence after defeating the Lost Kin- was probably some degree of alive and suffering that entire time since the Vessels were “meant” to be containers for the plague.

Which, from strategically dream nail-ing some of the walking corpses as well as other sources, we can tell is an experience of being burned inside, warped and controlled by a malicious force that the Hunter claims twists the mind.

And that one perfect child that was seemingly allowed to grow up- was just the one given the “honor” to take the plague into their body and be shackled inside the black egg ostensibly forever. In, what I’ve mentioned, must be _terrible pain_.

The vessels were people. All of them. And they were people that the bugs of Hallownest, or at least the king, basically created specifically to throw them under the bus to save themselves. The Pure Knight was given a memorial statue praising their sacrifice- but one really has to wonder, considering they were apparently born for that task- _did they ever have any say in that matter_? I hate to sound cynical, but I doubt a kingdom on the verge of collapse due to pestilence would accept that a creature they think of as empty and without will might not want to die for them. (especially when the depiction we see of Hallownest’s elite does not exactly compel me to believe in their compassion)

And the rest of them- the unsuitable vessels- were just thrown away and given an epitaph consisting basically of “we got what we wanted. We’re not going to look at or deal with what, or rather who, we left behind.”

There are so many bodies in the Abyss. There were so many “impure” Vessels. All of them are the same size as our Knight. All of them are children.

Our Knight chases Nosk because they were hopeful to see another _survivor_ from that situation. Their sentiments were probably very similar to those we see from the dead bugs that had already fallen victim to Nosk- “Don’t run, come back, I didn’t think anyone else had made it”. And, once again- we know that Nosk had successfully killed several other vessels in this manner. 

The vessels bonded to each other because quite possibly no one else who knew they were down there cared about them- certainly not the King, it’d seem. Maybe I’m being too hard on the guy considering I’ve yet to run into him in-game but however he responds to our Knight- the survivor- he’s failed to respond this entire time to the vast majority of vessels dying with no one to look out for them but each other.

This was a very unhappy little anecdote here, but, I guess what I’m saying is _god dammit these little messed up ghost children deserved better_. 

**Author's Note:**

> Analysis originally found here: <https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/160193435145/the-knight-and-the-vessels>


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